Kenyatta University

Kenyatta University is a public research university split across 13 campuses in Kenya.

The largest university site, Kenyatta University Main Campus, is in Nairobi County some 20km outside Nairobi city. A bus runs from here to the city centre with a journey time of around one hour.

Kenyatta’s student body is large: over 70,000 students are enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate courses, taught by approximately 1,500 academic staff.

The university was founded in 1970 as Kenyatta College, after the country regained its independence from British rule. It was granted university status in 1985 and renamed Kenyatta University accordingly.

Kenyatta’s wide range of course subjects are taught in English and sorted into 18 schools, including humanities and social sciences, public health, architecture, engineering and technology, medicine, and the school of creative film and media studies. In 2018, a new school of security, diplomacy and peace studies was opened.

Kenyatta University also has an extensive online learning facility: around 10,000 students are said to be enrolled in the Digital School of Virtual and Open Learning, which offers teaching through online videos and other materials.

Sports are a major competitive and social feature of the university’s community, and a long list of activities are available to students, from scrabble and chess to karate and taekwondo. Kenyatta University boasts two swimming pools, a gym, five football fields, dozens of racketball courts and two athletics and track fields.

The university has a strong alumni community, which includes several famous names, including Mwai Kibaki and a number of fellow former presidents and vice-presidents of Kenya.